At this point, there should be little doubt that there is a concerted attempt underway to use the war in Afghanistan as a justification for punitively taxing high earners.

Last weekend (noted at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the New York Times discovered that wars cost money. It cited Wisconsin Democratic Congressman David Obey's concern that funding the Afghanistan effort at the level requested months ago by General Stanley A. McChrystal would "devour virtually any other priorities that the president or anyone in Congress had."

Thursday, as reported by AFP (noted last night at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), House Democratic heavy-hitters Barney Frank, John Murtha, and (no surprise) Obey announced the "Share The Sacrifice Act of 2010," an income-tax surcharge that overwhelmingly targets high-income earners.

Now Michigan Democratic Senator Carl Levin has weighed in. Bloomberg dutifully carried his water, as seen in this graphic containing the first four paragraphs of the report:

You've got to hand it to the propagandists at the AFP. When heavy-hitting members of the party they favor announce an idea whose main purpose is, as the New York Times suddenly "discovered" last weekend, to remind people that wars cost money and distract from supposedly more important priorities, the wire service leaps into action.

Even AFP acknowledges that the tax proposal by several top-tier Democrats has no chance of becoming law. But again, that's not the point. Their proposal's purpose is to remind people that spending money on wars supposedly takes money out of the mouths of children and other living things, even those in non-existent congressional districts, and to attempt to make the climate for increasing taxes in the near future more favorable.

Here are key paragraphs of the unbylined report (bolds are mine):

President Obama’s decision to reverse himself and oppose the release of photographs depicting "detainee abuse" by the U.S. military might be wildly controversial on the left, but the Times story by Jeff Zeleny and Thom Shanker on Thursday’s front page was very slow to feature opposing voices. ACLU chief Anthony Romero surfaced in paragraph 11, and even then he was complaining about how the photos would expose the last administration.

However, on the other side of the front page, on the far left, appropriately enough, was a story by David Herszenhorn headlined "Unease Grows for Democrats Over Security." No one in this story denounced Obama’s reversal on the detainee photos, but they did question Obama’s plans for Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. Will the networks dare to find divisions between Democrats?

Just when you thought those holding on to the claim that the Iraq War is a failure had reached the intellectual bottom of the barrel, we get this from David Obey, as reported by Mike Soraghan at The Hill:

Terrorists are ‘running out of people to kill,’ says Obey

If violence is decreasing in Iraq, it may be because insurgents “are running out of people to kill,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) said Monday.

“There are fewer targets of opportunity,” Obey said in a speech to the National Press Club.

Obey was responding to a question about reports touted by Republicans that security is improving in Iraq and that President Bush’s “surge” strategy is working. He stressed that military success has not led to political reconciliation.

Unfortunately for Mr. Obey, there is this little tool known as Google Earth that enables us to check out the veracity of his statement.

This must be what David Obey thinks all of Iraq is like these days (pic is of a desert area east of Baghdad):